ut his weak mouth. He was not himself. Even a
boy preoccupied with his own troubles could not ignore it.

"Don't you feel right?" Neil said. "Don't you want me to do something,
Theodore?"

"Yes. Get out of here. Leave me alone," Mr. Burr snapped angrily.

"Sure," said Neil soothingly.

Suddenly Mr. Burr gripped Neil's reluctant, shy, boy's hand, kept it in
his for a minute in silence, and then abruptly let it go, pushing Neil
toward the door.

"Don't begrudge me one locked drawer when you'll own the whole place
some day," he said, with all the dignity that his fretful burst of
irritation had lacked. "I'd like to see that day. You're a good boy,
Donovan."

"You're not right. You've got a grouch. Come with me and walk it off,"
Neil said uneasily, but he did not press the invitation, and his friend
had little more to say. His silence was perhaps the most unusual thing
about his behaviour, which was all out of key to-day. Neil remembered
afterward that just as he closed the door upon Mr. Burr and his
vagaries, shutting them at the same time out of his mind, Mr. Burr,
sitting rather heavily down in the broken-springed desk chair, was
bending and stretching out a faultlessly manicured, slightly unsteady
hand toward the locked drawer of the desk.

Neil stepped out into the street with a cautious eye upon the Emporium
across the way, but no portly form was in sight there now, and no hearty
voice hailed him. He crossed the square and turned north, walking
quickly, soon leaving the larger houses behind, and then the smaller
houses above the railroad track, always climbing gradually as he walked.
Finally, at the entrance to an overgrown road that led off to his left,
and at the highest point of his long and slow ascent, he turned and
looked back at the town.

The town that Colonel Everard had put on the map hardly deserved the
honour, seen so in a glitter of afternoon light, with the long, sloping
hill leading down to it, and the white tower of the church pointing high
above it, a cozy huddle of houses at the foot of the hill. It looked
unassuming and sheltered and safe, only a group of homes to make a
simple and sheltered home in. The boy looked long at it, then turned
abruptly and plunged into the road before him.

It led straight across a shallow belt of fields and deep into the woods.
Only a cart-track at first, it soon lost itself here in a path, and the
path in turn grew fainter and became a brown, alluring ghost